Billionaire Unveiled Read online

  “I will. Thank you.”

  It broke my heart to hear her so sad and frightened. But she really had never had anything to be happy about. Her twenty-two years of life had been pretty damn harsh.

  We ended our call, but my gut was still tied up in painful knots when I hung up the phone. Really, I’d been a wreck ever since I’d seen Marcus at Greg’s bar. Our encounter had been unsettling, especially when I realized that just seeing him again had reminded me of every wet dream I’d ever had about him.

  And I’d had too many to count.

  I’d been pretty confused and wounded after Marcus had rescued me, but the mysterious pull that drew me to him was just as present as it had been when he’d risked his ass to pull me out of Syria. Honestly, I’d been drawn to him almost from the beginning of our acquaintance. The difficulty was, I now knew exactly what I was feeling. I was incredibly attracted to Marcus, and I had no idea how to stifle it.

  The chemistry had always been there, but I hadn’t been able to acknowledge the desire right after I’d escaped my kidnappers. But I’d had plenty of therapy to help me start to move on from that horrific experience, and I was able to admit that something about Marcus made me completely crazy. He was definitely hot, so wanting to have him pin me up against the wall and satisfy me wasn’t surprising. I guess it was all the other emotions that seemed to get tangled up with my passionate desire to screw him that baffled me.

  I admired what he’d been doing with PRO, even though my brother had been injured in one of the missions. Marcus always seemed to have everything under control in a way I’d never seen before. Granted, he’d gotten arrogant and bossy with me, but there was still some kind of nerves of steel that he seemed to carry along with him as easily as other men carried their cell phones. I’d seen him in plenty of hot spots, but he’d never seemed to be aware of the danger of being there. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a wrinkle in his custom suit when he was doing business in all of the war-torn areas of the world where we’d collided.

  I’d had to be in the scariest areas of the world for my job, but really, Marcus had never had to be in those places at all. Strangely, he just treated his travels like everyday work obligations, no matter where he happened to be.

  “But what is he doing here in Miami?” I mumbled to myself as I sat on the arm of the couch to wait for Greg.

  And why is he so concerned about who I’m dating?

  Yeah, he said Jett was concerned, but Marcus wasn’t the type of guy to be somewhere he didn’t want to be.

  Our entire encounter at Greg’s bar had been baffling. I’d never seen Marcus in anything but work mode except during his dangerous rescue and the short time we’d spent together afterward. Acting like he was personally concerned was disconcerting.

  I tried to shrug it off. It didn’t matter if he liked Greg or not. He’d have to deal with the fact that I was dating somebody he didn’t think was a good match for me. Nobody had ever interfered in my love life, and it wasn’t happening now. My relationship with Greg was too important to me.

  The doorbell finally rang, and I shook myself out of my negative thoughts to go answer the door.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” Greg drawled as I opened the door.

  “Hi,” I answered breathlessly.

  He kissed me on the cheek and then walked into the living room as I closed the door.

  “How are you feeling?” he questioned, making himself at home as he took a seat on the couch.

  “Better,” I replied, hoping he didn’t grill me about not showing up at the bar for our date.

  Greg was the type of man who was always cautious, always careful. He was attractive and fit, and had a nice, thick head of blond hair that would send most women running after him, even if he wasn’t filthy rich. But there was a veil over his dark eyes that would never quite let anybody in.

  My goal was to know him better than any woman ever had, and teach him to trust me. Unfortunately, me not showing at his bar—or so he thought—probably made him nervous. Greg was always watching for any kind of reaction or anything that didn’t fit into his world exactly the way he thought it should. Me being absent last night shouldn’t make him paranoid, but I’d already discovered that with Greg, any odd behavior was suspect.

  “I’m glad,” he finally answered, his eyes raking over me like he wanted to see if I was telling the truth.

  “Would you like a drink?” I asked politely.

  “No, gorgeous. I just came to make sure you were…safe.”

  I sat down on the couch next to him. We’d only been on a few dates, and attended a few charity events together. The most intimacy we’d experienced was a kiss at the door. “Maybe I was just tired,” I lied.

  “I thought you were sick,” he said, sounding suspicious.

  I shook my head. “I was, but maybe I just felt that way because I didn’t get enough sleep.”

  He reached out and took my hand, squeezing it tighter than needed to show simple affection. “Then you should get some rest, Dani.”

  “I will,” I replied, trying not to notice that my hand was losing circulation from his hold.

  “I don’t really like the fact that you stood me up last night. But I’ll get over it,” he said in a warning voice, a tone that told me that I’d better never do it again.

  “I’m really sorry,” I answered remorsefully.

  “I’m powerful in this city, Dani. A man like me doesn’t have to wait.”

  “I know,” I agreed.

  Gregory was a force to be reckoned with in Miami. He was extremely rich, and donated money to politicians and law enforcement to keep them indebted to him. He didn’t have the power of a Lawson or a Colter, but his multimillionaire status made him a VIP in all of South Florida.

  He stood up, pulling me to my feet because of his grip on my hand. “I’m glad you understand me,” he answered with a smirk.

  “Are you leaving already?” I questioned, looking up at him with a tremulous smile.

  “I have things to do,” he affirmed. “But I had to check on you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He pulled me against him and dropped a kiss on my mouth before he answered, “I had to make sure you knew how I felt about not seeing you at my club last night.”

  His emotions were pretty crystal-clear, actually. Greg was a control freak, and anything he couldn’t make go his way wasn’t acceptable.

  “I won’t let you down again,” I promised.

  “That’s good. Very good,” he answered as he finally let go of my hand. “Stay healthy, Dani. I want to see you in my bed as soon as you’re feeling better.”

  I wanted to shake my hand to return the circulation to my extremity, but I didn’t.

  His announcement about wanting to have sex with me wasn’t a surprise. He’d made it perfectly clear when we’d met that he wanted me.

  And I was pretty certain that up until last night, he’d always gotten what he wanted.

  I followed him to the door and saw him out, leaning against the wood after I’d flipped the bolt.

  “That didn’t go exactly the way I’d hoped,” I whispered to myself as I blew out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  Greg would never be a warm and fuzzy kind of guy. He had an extremely hard edge to him that should make me want to run away from him as quickly as possible. But I didn’t because I really wanted to get close to him.

  I straightened and pushed myself off the door, starting to feel as exhausted as I told Greg I’d been the night before.

  “How do I get close to him when he never lets his guard down?” I mused aloud as I walked to the kitchen.

  Greg hadn’t told me when he wanted to meet again, but I knew there would be more dates, more time spent together, and I’d do everything in my power to try to be his confidant.

  I refused to accept that our relationship would go any other way.

  Marcus

  “Son of a bitch!” I cursed as I saw Gregory Becker lea
ve Dani’s apartment.

  I was sitting in the parking lot near Danica’s condo in my luxury rental car, doing surveillance. It was difficult for me to force myself not to go after the little weasel.

  Had the bastard hurt Dani?

  What was he doing at her place?

  I’d spent plenty of time thinking about Dani and Becker together, but my gut still hurt every time I thought about Becker laying a hand on her.

  Why in the fuck am I sitting in her parking lot alone, watching her condo?

  I took a deep breath and let it out as I watched that dickhead Becker get into his presumptuous luxury sports car and leave. I couldn’t approach him. Not yet. I needed more information, which answered my question as to why I was watching Dani’s condo.

  Somehow, I’d known that Becker would show up.

  And I was, after all, a goddamn spy. Being patient and collecting information was what I did. And I was very good at doing that.

  I just didn’t like it very much right now, especially not the being patient part of the task.

  I didn’t want to wait.

  I wanted to confront the asshole right fucking now.

  There was no question as to whether or not I was going to check up on Dani. If Becker had been at her place, I wanted to make sure she was safe. At least that was how I rationalized driving closer to her condo, getting out of my vehicle, and making my way to the entrance of her condo building.

  There was minimal security at the entrance, and it wasn’t difficult to gain entry by simply following another occupant through the door once they’d entered the code.

  It hadn’t been hard to get all the information on Dani that I’d wanted once I’d requested a file on her from DC. And yeah, I’d rationalized that action too, telling myself I needed her address and any other recent information I could get because she was dating somebody who was on the radar of the federal government. Hell, I’d been sent a loaded file of information, but none of it was all that relevant to her current status as Becker’s love interest.

  I grimaced as I rang her doorbell, the thought of Becker so much as touching a hair on Dani’s head making my gut churn.

  She’s one of my best friend’s sisters. It isn’t abnormal for me to be concerned.

  Really, I pretty much knew that excuse was bullshit, but I let it roll off my back. Danica Lawson was off-limits, even if I did get hard every time I saw her. She always had been. Dani was Jett’s sister, and I absolutely couldn’t just nail her without everything becoming complicated. And I hated complications. Now that I had my priorities straight, I was determined to keep a level head.

  “What are you doing here?” Dani asked, her voice disapproving as she stared at me from the door she’d just opened.

  Christ! Didn’t she bother to ask who was ringing her doorbell before she just opened the door that way? “You never answered all my questions,” I replied, inviting myself into her home as I brushed past her.

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you,” she said huffily before she closed the door, turned toward me and then crossed her arms stubbornly. “You need to leave. I doubt that Greg is always watching me, but I don’t want him to know you were here.”

  “Do you do everything he tells you to do?” I remarked as calmly as possible. “Doesn’t it concern you even a little bit that you aren’t sure whether or not some guy is watching you?”

  Hell, it worried me that Danica might be in deep enough with Gregory Becker that he might have put somebody on her to watch her every move. She should be terrified.

  “No. It doesn’t bother me.” She eyed me suspiciously as she added, “I see you lost the custom suit today.”

  “It’s Saturday,” I answered. “I don’t wear a suit on the weekends.”

  She snorted. “It’s good to know you lighten up two days out of the week.”

  I frowned at her. “I don’t ever lighten up. I just dress more relaxed.”

  Danica looked beautiful in a casual yellow dress that made her hair appear to be a deeper red. And if I appeared more lax than usual, it was because of my father. He’d always tried to be with his kids on the weekends, and he lost the suit on Saturday and Sunday when he was home, and tried to just be our dad. For some reason, I always followed his example, even though I didn’t have anybody who cared what I wore. But it made me somehow feel like I was following in his footsteps when I wore jeans and a casual shirt when it wasn’t a workday.

  My weekend attire did make it difficult to pack a gun. But I managed.

  “It’s a good look on you,” she answered as she moved closer, and looked up at me with an irritated expression. “But what are you doing here, Marcus? I still haven’t forgotten the fact that you literally hauled me away from a date.”

  “Get over it,” I suggested. “Since you’re affiliating with somebody who is possibly guilty of international crimes, you needed to be taken away from trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gregory Becker has been rumored for years to be into some unsavory ways of making money. It isn’t a secret in the business world.”

  “They’re just rumors,” she said defensively.

  “Behind every rumor is a grain of truth,” I warned. “You know that. How did you ever get tangled up with somebody like him? And what happened to your job as an international correspondent?”

  Her eyes left my face as she turned around and sat on the arm of her couch. “I told you I needed a break. I lost my edge,” she admitted hesitantly. “I worked around Europe and other countries, but I never could manage to go back to the Middle East without panicking. I decided to leave my network.”

  I saw a look of vulnerability flash across her face. Generally, I could find a way to use that moment of weakness to my advantage, but I didn’t have the stomach for it with Danica. “That’s understandable after what happened to you.”

  She shook her head. “As a reporter, I couldn’t afford to be afraid. My neurosis could endanger my whole crew. But I wasn’t fearless anymore. I haven’t been the same since…the incident.”

  Dani had reason to want to stay as far away from the location of her kidnapping as possible. She wouldn’t be human if she wasn’t wary. “You could have stayed on as European correspondence.”

  “I needed something different,” she said, her eyes trained away from mine. “I just wanted some time.”

  “Then take all the time you need. It was madness to go back so soon after what happened.” I hesitated before asking, “What part of the hostage situation is still haunting you?”

  I wasn’t sure I could deal with her answer without wanting the bastards who’d kidnapped her to be alive again so I could snuff them out myself. Oh yeah, Dani had talked to me, but I had a feeling she was leaving out a very large chunk of what had happened to her.

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “It’s not like they’ll ever serve time or pay for what happened to me.”

  “They can’t be because they’re all dead,” I informed her flatly. She already knew that, but I felt compelled to remind her that none of the rebels would ever bother her again. Personally, I felt like instant death was something they hadn’t deserved.

  Her head jerked back toward me, and her expression was solemn. “Logically, I understand that, but my brain isn’t always reasonable, Marcus. How did you ever get that information? You never told me how you knew. The information should have been classified.”

  I could hardly tell her that I had quite a lot of intel from the government. Nobody knew about my involvement with the CIA and intelligence gathering except my family. Not even her brother, Jett. My PRO team had only known that I was skilled in private rescue operations. “I overheard a conversation about it,” I lied smoothly because I was accustomed to twisting the truth.

  Her expression changed as tears began to flow down her cheeks. “Is it terrible to say that I’m glad they’re all dead?” she questioned, her body visibly shaking.

  “Of course not,” I said. “After what
happened, you should be glad they’re off the face of the earth.”

  I watched helplessly as tears continued to flow down her cheeks. Both of us had seen horrendous atrocities that shouldn’t be occurring in the modern world, but her experience had been fucking personal.

  “What haunts you the most?” I asked insistently, wanting to help her kill off those ghosts.

  She swiped the tears from her face and then turned her gorgeous turquoise eyes on me. There was a burning anger in her expression that would probably make the strongest person flinch, but I refused to back down.

  “Can’t we just let it go?” she snapped. “Because I really want to forget it, but I relive it over and over in my nightmares. I’ve been in counseling ever since it happened, and I still can’t stop dreaming about it. I’ve dealt with the emotional trauma as much as I’m able to right now, but there are still times when I can’t stop myself from remembering how I had wished they’d just kill me so I didn’t have to endure another minute of pain or another minute of them using my body.”

  She was breathless by the time she’d finished, and I stared angrily at her tiny, vulnerable figure, and troubled eyes. I wasn’t pissed at her for what she’d said. Dani had every right to hate talking about her experience. I was enraged by the unfairness of what she’d endured.

  Dammit! Maybe I had once said she’d known the risks of her job. But that didn’t mean I’d ever wanted her to suffer. “I’m sorry,” I said in a husky voice. “I didn’t mean to bring up something that hurts to talk about.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she answered. “It majorly pisses me off. I want to move on. But my fear paralyzes me sometimes. I think I’m over what happened, and it comes back in my damn dreams. I lost my skills and a job that I loved because I just can’t seem to pretend it never happened.”

  “It will eventually fade, but I’m not sure you ever completely get over an experience like that,” I informed her grimly.

  “Obviously I haven’t,” she said in a tremulous voice. “Not entirely.”

  Christ! I felt like I was experiencing her pain. My heart was racing, and I did all I could do not to carry her away again, and put her in a place where she’d never be harmed again. There was an unfamiliar ache in my chest for everything she’d been through. I felt like I was having a damn heart attack.